Bombings at two Egyptian
churches killed more than 35 people as they gathered to mark Palm Sunday,
officials said, in one of the deadliest recent attacks on the country’s Coptic
Christians.
The attacks on the Mar
Girgis church in the city of Tanta north of Cairo and Saint Mark’s Church in
the coastal city of Alexandria came just weeks ahead of a visit by Pope Francis
to show support for Egypt’s large Christian minority.
Egyptian officials
denounced the attack as an attempt to sow divisions in the country, while
Francis sent his “deep condolences” to Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II. There
was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but Egyptian
Christians have repeatedly been targeted by jihadists including the Islamic
State group.
The first blast killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 70 when it hit the church in Nile Delta City of Tanta, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Cairo, according to a health ministry toll.
Images broadcast by private
television stations showed bloodstains smearing the whitewashed walls of the
church next to shredded wooden benches. “The explosion took place in the front
rows, near the altar, during the mass,” General
Tarek Atiya, the deputy to Egypt’s interior minister in charge of relations
with the media, told AFP. The worshippers had been celebrating Palm Sunday, one
of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, marking the triumphant entrance
of Jesus to Jerusalem.
The second blast killed at least 11 people and wounded 35 at the church in Alexandria, Egypt’s second largest city, according to the health ministry. Tawadros had been attending a mass at the church but a Coptic Church official said he had left before the blast. Francis, who is due to visit Cairo on April 28-29, offered prayers for the victims.
“Let us pray for
the victims of the attack unfortunately carried out today,” he said in an Angelus
prayer. “May the Lord convert the heart of those who
sow terror, violence and death and also the heart of those who make weapons and
trade in them.”
Copts, who make up about
one tenth of Egypt’s population of more than 92 million and who celebrate
Easter next weekend, have been targeted by several attacks in recent months.
Jihadists and Islamists
accuse Copts of supporting the military overthrow of Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, which ushered
in a deadly crackdown on his supporters.
In December, a suicide
bombing claimed by IS killed 29 worshippers during Sunday mass in Cairo. The
bombing of the church within a compound that also holds the seat of the Coptic
papacy was the deadliest attack against the minority in recent memory.
A spate of jihadist-linked
attacks in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula, including the murder of a Copt in
the city of El Arish whose house was also burned, have led some Coptic families
to flee their homes.
About 250 Christians took
refuge in the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya after IS released a video in
February calling for attacks on the religious minority. Reacting before the
second bombing in Alexandria, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ahmed Abu Zeid, called the attack in
Tanta “a failed attempt against our unity”. “Terrorism
hits Egypt again, this time on Palm Sunday,” he tweeted.
Prime Minister Sherif Ismail also condemned the attack, stressing Egypt’s determination to “eliminate terrorism”. The Cairo-based Al-Azhar, an influential Sunni Muslim authority, said it aimed to “destabilise security and… the unity of Egyptians”. Egypt’s Copts have endured successive attacks since Morsi’s ouster in July 2013. More than 40 churches were attacked nationwide in the two weeks after the deadly dispersal by security forces of two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo on August 14, 2013, Human Rights Watch said.
Amnesty International later
said more than 200 Christian-owned properties were attacked and 43 churches
seriously damaged, adding that at least four people were killed. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who as
then army chief helped remove Morsi, has defended his security forces and
accused jihadists of attacking Copts in order to divide the country.
In October 2011, almost 30
people — mostly Coptic Christians — were killed after the army charged at a
protest outside the state television building in Cairo to denounce the torching
of a church in southern Egypt.
In May that year, clashes
between Muslims and Copts left 15 dead in the working-class Cairo neighbourhood
of Imbaba where two churches were attacked. A few months earlier, the unclaimed
bombing of a Coptic church killed more than 20 people in Egypt’s second city of
Alexandria on New Year’s Day. (Guardian)
No comments:
Post a Comment